On the Passaic River with NY/NJ Baykeeper
The capped site of the former Diamond Alkali factory, which produced Agent Orange near the Passaic River for decades. Researchers are now looking to study whether bacteria can remove some harmful pollutants from the river.
(S.P. Sullivan | NJ Advance Media)
NEWARK — The riverbed of the lower Passaic River has hardly been disturbed since the early 1980s when officials determined the sediment was too toxic to dredge.
Now scientists from Rutgers and two other public universities, in a pilot study being funded by polluters on the hook for the federal clean up of the Passaic, want to grow an army to fight the contamination.
An army of microbes.
Using a technique known as bioremediation, the group wants to study whether bacteria or other microorganisms can be used to break down the toxic cocktail of contamination embedded in the river muck.
It's an idea with foundations in environmental science, but one that has invited skepticism from river advocates who support the federal Environmental Protection Agency's plan to remove 4.3 million cubic yards of tainted sediment from the lower Passaic.
Over a period of 18 months, the team will look at whether the tiny organisms can break down the dioxin and PCBs left behind by decades of industry along the river. They'll start with test sites in Newark Bay and in the river near Lister Avenue in Newark, where the Diamond Shamrock Co. once ran a factory that made Agent Orange, one of the sources of the pollution.
Those cancer-causing contaminants are poison for the fish and crabs that live close to the sediment, and the state has strict prohibitions on eating stuff pulled from the river. But for certain microorganisms, scientists say, those contaminants are food.
Donna Fennell, an environmental science professor at Rutgers and one of the researchers on the project, said that given the legacy of contamination in the Passaic, it's "very, very likely" that there are organisms in the sediment that have evolved to break down those pollutants.
"New Jersey is a place with a legacy of industry and chemical production, and a lot of contaminated sites," Fennell said. "It's terrible what's happened, but for scientists, it's exciting microbiology."
Bioremediation has been studied for decades as a way to remove harmful material from the environment without digging it up and carting it off, the researchers say, but field studies have been limited for lack of funding.
More than 20 years ago, scientists funded by General Electric studied the use of microbes to break down PCBs on the river, considered the largest Superfund in the nation. That study had "limited success," according to John Pardue, an LSU professor and member of the Passaic study group. A lot has changed since then, he said.
"We're at a confluence of the science being ready and there being a need, a driver, for someone to fund this study," Pardue said.
River advocates remain wary of proposals being supported by polluters on the hook for its clean up.
The bioremediation plan is one of a number of schemes pushed in recent years by competing factions of responsible parties looking to reduce the price tag for mending the damage industry wrought. One group, known as the Cooperating Parties Group, drew scrutiny in late 2013 for advocating a controversial fish swap program, where anglers could trade tainted fish pulled from the river for fish safe for consumption.
An EPA map of the Passaic River Superfund site.
The new study is being funded by Maxus Energy Corp. and Tierra Solutions, Inc., two companies who inherited liability for industrial pollution on the Passaic. Pardue said that the researchers have been assured independence and will publish any results in peer-reviewed science journals.
The researchers are approaching the subject carefully, cautioning that success in the lab won't necessarily mean success on the river, and that scaling it to the entire lower 17 miles of the river would be more difficult still.
But representatives from the company have been pressing state and federal regulators to embrace the pilot, meeting privately with EPA officials to push the project.
They plan on spending millions of dollars on the bioremediation study, but declined to give hard figures. That would still be far less than their share of the $1.7 billion EPA clean up proposal.
Environmentalists welcome the development of new science to clean up New Jersey's polluted waterways, but say it can't come at the expense of a thorough clean up of the Passaic.
"We do need a better way to dispose of all this contaminated sediment," said Debbie Mans, head of the NY/NJ Baykeeper. "We don't disagree there could be interesting science around this. Our big thing is, we don't let this to -- in any way -- slow down the Superfund process."
Jeff Tittel, head of the New Jersey Sierra Club, said the bioremediation technique could still have promise for the site if it were used to reduce the toxins in the sediment before it was dredged up and brought elsewhere.
"The only way to clean up the river is to clean up the river," said Tittel, whose group has called for a full dredge of the Passaic. "No one wants to do that because it's too pricey."
The preferred option being pursued by the EPA would likely take more than a decade, extracting tons of toxic muck from the riverbed and closing off access to the river for years.
NJ Transit and Amtrak officials have expressed concern to the EPA about the clean-up's disruption to rail travel, because the removal of the sediment will require raising long-dormant and structurally unsound drawbridges along the river.
One of the companies, East Brunswick-based Tierra, said in a statement that the EPA has indicated that their clean up plan "could be amended to include bioremediation if test results are compelling."
But regulators say that bioremediation doesn't yet have a proven track record, and are moving forward with plans to dredge tons of material, possibly capping some in place.
"I'm not aware of anywhere this has been done," said Ray Basso, the director of the EPA's Passaic River project. While bioremediation has been used to decontaminate groundwater and soil, this would be the first time it was used to remove harmful material from a tidal riverbed, he said.
The agency is reviewing work plans for the first phase of the pilot, which would involve removing sediment from the river and testing the microbes' ability to neutralize the harmful chemicals there. After that, the state Department of Environmental Protection will have to approve a second phase out on the river.
Larry Hajna, a DEP spokesman, said representatives from his agency had attended informational sessions about the project, but were awaiting results of the preliminary phase.
The pilot would last until 2017. The researchers say that even if it isn't a success, the results of the study could have applications for the more than 1,300 Superfund sites around the country.
"A lot of the remedial approaches that are in use today have been developed here in New Jersey," Pardue said. "Problems have been solved here and the technologies have been exported."
S.P. Sullivan may be reached at ssullivan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.